|
 To read aloud |
|
WHY DO PEOPLE CHOOSE TO GO TO HELL?
May 22, 1982
This is in response to the question which arose last evening at the
Exploration Group of the San Diego Swedenborgian Church at the home
of its pastor, Reverend Dr. Ivan Franklin, Del Mar, CA. One of the
participants of the group asked why people choose to go to Hell if it is
such a miserable place. Why would someone want to spend one’s life, or
even potentially one’s eternity, in such a place as Hell?
Because the answer to this question has a broad implication of
general public interest, the Most High requested the following message
be transmitted, which is to be included in the contents of “Messages
From Within.”
There are several spiritually important reasons why people choose, by
their own volition and freedom of choice, to go to Hell. Before revealing
some of these reasons, it is necessary first to realize that the Hells, for
those who are in them, do not seem as bad and as miserable as people
are taught by their religious doctrines. These kinds of religious doctrines
utilize fear tactics to keep people within the line of obedience to their
respective religious prescriptions and demands. Such tactics are
infantile, immature and foolish game plays having little in common with
what the Hells really look like or are like. People who choose to go to the
Hells would not feel good in any other place at that particular time of
their life span. For their current spiritual condition, the Hells are the
most appropriate and congruent place to be for the content of their lives.
During this particular time of their lives they are in love with everything
the Hells signify and represent. Thus, they are in love with existential
misery and unhappiness. Such hellish misery and unhappiness is the
source of their very life. As Swedenborg pointed out, to remove this love
from them means to remove their lives. Such a removal would lead to
their instant, eternal perishment. For this reason, any place other than
the Hells, for these people at this particular life span of their being and
existence, would mean much greater unhappiness and misery than to be
in Hell.
Again, as pointed out throughout these “Messages From Within”,
people tend to generalize and project their own ideas, concepts, desires,
wishful thinking, personal predispositions and false expectations as to
the kind of unhappiness and misery which should be in the Hells, and, of
course, as to the kind of happiness and delight which should be in the
Heavens. They do not want to admit that what is happy and delightful
for one can be misery and unhappiness for another, and vice versa.
However, from the standpoint of universal order, the Hells are the
very unhappiness and misery in themselves by their content, purpose
and style of life. The reason for this is they are constantly out of order
because they place themselves outside of Creation (as revealed in
messages dated March 31, 1982, May 5, 1982 and May 6, 1982). The
inherent consequences of such a placement are everything that is
opposite to the positive state and process which constitutes the content,
purpose and style of life of the Universality-Of-It-All. Nothing of true
nature and true reality is a part of the opposing trends of the positive
state and process. Therefore, everything in the Hells is a fake. People live
there in constant illusions, deceptions and self-deceptions of reality and
of the true nature of anything. They love their illusions, deceptions and
self-deceptions and, by that love, they vivify them and make them seem
real and natural. The misery and unhappiness of such fake being and
existence is obvious by their content, but not as much by personal
experience of an individual who is in love with this condition. As long as
one is in love with something or someone, no matter how miserable and
unhappy one is, one strives to maintain and support everything in one’s
life which sustains that love. Such is the nature of love and life. In order
to change such a person, one would first have to convince that person of
the futility and counter-productivity of such a love. Then and only then
can gradual replacement of such a disastrous love with a true love of
mutual benefit and sharing be initiated. But, it is not an easy task to
convince someone of one’s illusions, deceptions and self-deceptions, if one
firmly believes they are truly real. As a matter of fact, for that one, in
one’s subjective perception, they are real. One makes them real by one’s
desire and will for them to be real. Nothing is more real than the reality
of one’s love regardless of what such love may be. If one takes away from
that one that one’s love, one is taking away everything that one has. To
take away one’s love is to take away one’s life. In the connotation of this
message about the Hells, to take away one’s Hell means to, take away
one’s life.
So, one has to be very careful in the assessment of the situation of
those who choose, for the time being, for their own spiritual subjective
and personal reasons, to go to Hell. One would be wise not to project
anything of one’s own ideas, expectations and conceptions of what the
Hellish life is all about. One can only assume that for different people it
is different. No generalizations from one experience to another should be
attempted.
Now, to go back to the initial question — why people would choose to
go to Hell. At this time, four reasons for such a choice may be revealed.
1. It is necessary to realize that approximately 40% of the human
population of Earth are a direct incarnation of the negative ideas of the
Hells (by the process described in the message dated May 2, 1982). These
people are fabricated from ideas of hate of everything good and true.
Therefore, from the very first moment of conception they sustain
themselves by love of this hate. In the process of their Earthly life, they
do everything in their power to support, to fuel and to perpetuate this
love. They do not know, and they do not want to know, that there is a
possibility of existence and being of anything different from their love.
Whatever is not congruent with such a love is offensive, aversive,
disgusting and unnatural. Because such people are fully identified with
their love of hate and of its devastating consequences and outcomes, they
naturally choose to go to the Hells (from where they originated), where
such love can flourish and is at home. No other place would be feasible or
even possible for them. Such people have the greatest difficulty in
changing their loves and lifestyles. In many instances, it takes many
eons (in human Earthly linear time conceptualization) for them to come
to the realization that there is something different and better than what
they have.
2. Approximately 60% of the people on planet Earth are incarnated
from other than negative states and conditions (again, see message dated
May 2, 1982). Out of this 60%, approximately 40% choose to go to Hell on
a temporary basis for various extremely important spiritual, personal
and subjective reasons known only to the Most High and to their Inner
Mind. It is not permitted for anyone to know these reasons except the
Most High and the Inner Mind of these people. Suffice it to say here that
they need this experience for both their own personal learning and for
the purpose of acquiring experiences which have an important universal
implication. Without such experiences something very vital would be
lacking, the lack of which would endanger the entire Creation.
But, most importantly, people such as these go to the Hells for the
purpose of setting a continuous example and comparison for others there
who originated from the negative state and process in itself. By the
process of working out their own problems and gradually receding from
their falsely assumed identities and loves, they are brought out of the
Hells and join the positive state, showing to all in the Hells not only that
it is possible to change and come out of the Hells, but also how to do it
and the ways of doing it successfully.
For people such as this, it usually does not take that long to
accomplish their purpose for being in the Hells; they come out relatively
soon.
3. The third category of those who choose to go to the Hells for a
certain duration are people who, when they come in contact with the
negative state and see all its atrocities, bloodshed and miseries, are so
blinded by it they forget about, the freedom of choice principle. (Everyone
participates in the negative state by one’s freedom of choice, and no one
is forced to be part of it.) Instead, they start to blame God for this
situation and they demand from the Most High that He change it and
entirely eliminate the negative state. Thus, they demand from the Most
High that He break the order of the universe and violate people’s
freedom of choice by forcing them to be good.
When the Most High does not respond to such a demand, they become
bitter and they rebel against universal order and the Most High and, by
this very act of rebellion, they inadvertently place themselves in the
Hells. The point here is that rejection of the universal order, reflected in
the principles of freedom of choice, leads inevitably to rejection of Divine
Love and Divine Wisdom. This, in turn, leads to rejection of the existence
and being of the Most High. By this process one excludes oneself from
Creation and its principles and laws. Such an exclusion places one
directly into the Hells because only the Hells and the negative state on
Earth are outside of Creation, and thus outside of the Most High.
The rejection of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom leads also to the
establishment of loves and foolishness in opposition to Divine Love. This
rejection originates love of self (Swedenborg pointed out that those who
are in this type of love are called Devils) and love of non-spiritual
worldly, earthly, corporeal, material things (those who are in this type of
love are called Satans). So one ends up either in love of self or in love of
worldly things or both. Because such loves are outside Creation, which is
ruled by love to the Most High and love to others through love for oneself,
they place one in the Hells, where they are at home. These kinds of
people are very stubborn in their rebellious nature and it takes a lot of
effort and time to bring them to the realization of the futility, misery and
waste of such loves.
4. The fourth type of people who choose to go to Hell for a period of
time is the type who fall in love with the dogma of their respective
religions. By the act of falling in love with such dogmas, they start to
oppose fanatically any changes in their religion and thus in their lives.
After all, they love those dogmas the way they are and they like the
lifestyle as prescribed by those dogmas the way it is. They fanatically
adhere to such lifestyles and all dogmas of their religion to the point that
they begin to hate everything different from what they believe to be the
real truth. They abhor any changes because they undermine the secure
position of their love. For this love they are willing to destroy, to kill and
to condemn to eternal damnation and the Hells anyone who is not a part
of their belief system or lifestyle. Such an attitude places them right into
the deepest Hells. There is nothing more spiritually devastating than
such a situation. The reason is that this situation is developed in the
name of the Most High whose nature does not contain even remotely
anything fanatic, dogmatic, stagnant, preferential, exclusive or
one-sided. People such as this are the closest to the point of profanation
and commitment of what is called an unpardonable sin. If there were not
a special protection by the Most High from the possibility of such a
profanation, this type of person would be the first to rush headlong into
profanation of everything holy, truthful and Godly. The reason is that
they lie consistently, and believe their lies, about the very Absolute
nature of the Most High and all His/Her Absolute Principles, Categories
and their derivatives.
Obviously, by such an attitude and lifestyle, people such as this
choose with “delight” and “pleasure” to go to the Hells where they may
pursue their dogmatic and fanatic lifestyle with ever greater ferocity, and
may stagnate in their belief system as long as they want to. People such
as this become the most ardent participants of attacks on the positive
state during spiritual wars because they cannot stand the progressive,
ever-changing nature of the positive state and its members. Any notion of
change makes them furious and beastly. They truly become as wild
beasts without any logic or reason.
People in the Hells with this type of love are the most resistant to
coming out of the Hells. In order to come out they would have to first
admit that progression and change are a vital part of life and living.
However, this admission is contrary to their adopted nature. Therefore,
it takes a lot of effort and time to convince them to give up their adopted
nature and to assume something progressive and ever changing in an
upward and forward direction.
There are, at least, three other extremely important spiritual reasons
why someone chooses to go to Hell. However, under the presently
existing conditions of spirituality of mankind on Earth, knowledge of
these reasons would not be beneficial and proper for people and could not
be properly conceived, apprehended and accepted by them. They will be
revealed if and when mankind is spiritually ready to know them.
This is all that is permitted to know about this subject at this time.
Source: MESSAGE FROM WITHIN
