Heaven/Hell Speculation

[Eclogue]

I started thinking about this after a friend told me about a strange dream he had (perhaps it was a vision?). He said that in his dream a demon appeared to him and basically took him on a tour of “his personal hell.” My friend was surprised to find that his hell was actually a tropical beach, the most beautiful beach you could imagine, inhabited by gorgeous women and a butler who would bring him anything he desired. Sounds like most people’s idea of paradise, right? The archangel Michael appeared then, and my friend asked him how hell could be so nice; Michael basically said something to the effect that it gets old eventually (at least, that’s what I gathered from my friend’s story).

I don’t really know if this was a vision, per se, but it got me thinking about the true nature of the afterlife. Another influence was Dante’s Inferno; I was intrigued by how everyone’s punishment was really an extreme, twisted version of what they longed for in life. These and other things have brought me to the conclusion that, when we die, God will give us what we want. If we love one another in life, we will be blessed with the presence of God who is Love. And if I love only myself, then God will not force me to join Him in His all-encompassing love for humanity. He will leave me alone and not bother me again. Only then will I see how empty and painful it is to love no one but myself, to be cut off from real Love.

That’s kind of what I think heaven and hell are. Now here’s what I think heaven and hell are NOT. Hell is not a torture chamber. There are no pitchforks or caverns or cauldrons or chains. These things are just metaphors for the self-inflicted spiritual agony of the sinful. If you are “being good” just to avoid physical pain, you need to reevaluate your motivations. If your motivation is the fear of physical discomfort, you’re going to have a hard time staying out of hell. Same with the “pop-culture” concept of heaven. There are no mansions in heaven. There are no gold paving-stones in heaven. There is no eternal ice-cream buffet in heaven. If your motivation is the desire for mansions and gold and comfort and ease, you’re going to have a hard time getting into heaven. You should do what’s right because it’s right, not in order to acquire pleasure or avoid pain. Virtue is its own reward. If you can’t accept that, you’re headed for tropical paradise in a handbasket.

Just some weird speculation. Does anyone else have any ideas about the nature of heaven, hell, and/or purgatory? I just find this stuff interesting, and I think it might help my spiritual journey if had a clearer view of the destination, so to speak.

 

[Pfaffenhoffen]

I started thinking about this after a friend told me about a strange dream he had (perhaps it was a vision?). He said that in his dream a demon appeared to him and basically took him on a tour of “his personal hell.” My friend was surprised to find that his hell was actually a tropical beach, the most beautiful beach you could imagine, inhabited by gorgeous women and a butler who would bring him anything he desired. Sounds like most people’s idea of paradise, right? The archangel Michael appeared then, and my friend asked him how hell could be so nice; Michael basically said something to the effect that it gets old eventually (at least, that’s what I gathered from my friend’s story).

I don’t really know if this was a vision, per se, but it got me thinking about the true nature of the afterlife. Another influence was Dante’s Inferno; I was intrigued by how everyone’s punishment was really an extreme, twisted version of what they longed for in life. These and other things have brought me to the conclusion that, when we die, God will give us what we want. If we love one another in life, we will be blessed with the presence of God who is Love. And if I love only myself, then God will not force me to join Him in His all-encompassing love for humanity. He will leave me alone and not bother me again. Only then will I see how empty and painful it is to love no one but myself, to be cut off from real Love.

That’s kind of what I think heaven and hell are. Now here’s what I think heaven and hell are NOT. Hell is not a torture chamber. There are no pitchforks or caverns or cauldrons or chains. These things are just metaphors for the self-inflicted spiritual agony of the sinful. If you are “being good” just to avoid physical pain, you need to reevaluate your motivations. If your motivation is the fear of physical discomfort, you’re going to have a hard time staying out of hell. Same with the “pop-culture” concept of heaven. There are no mansions in heaven. There are no gold paving-stones in heaven. There is no eternal ice-cream buffet in heaven. If your motivation is the desire for mansions and gold and comfort and ease, you’re going to have a hard time getting into heaven. You should do what’s right because it’s right, not in order to acquire pleasure or avoid pain. Virtue is its own reward. If you can’t accept that, you’re headed for tropical paradise in a handbasket.

Just some weird speculation. Does anyone else have any ideas about the nature of heaven, hell, and/or purgatory? I just find this stuff interesting, and I think it might help my spiritual journey if had a clearer view of the destination, so to speak.

Heaven according to St Augustin
There were horses eating in the stable and hearing the cutlery of the king on the floor above and the jokes and laughter and music in the big party. Then one of the horses said to his comrade: "What good straw is eating our beloved King!

So is Heaven according to us.

 

[tonyrey]

“…These and other things have brought me to the conclusion that, when we die, God will give us what we want. If we love one another in life, we will be blessed with the presence of God who is Love. And if I love only myself, then God will not force me to join Him in His all-encompassing love for humanity. He will leave me alone and not bother me again. Only then will I see how empty and painful it is to love no one but myself, to be cut off from real Love…”

An excellent summary of the purpose of our life on earth! I believe heaven and hell begin here and now - not in the remote future…

 

[Bohm_Bawerk]

I started thinking about this after a friend told me about a strange dream he had (perhaps it was a vision?). He said that in his dream a demon appeared to him and basically took him on a tour of “his personal hell.” My friend was surprised to find that his hell was actually a tropical beach, the most beautiful beach you could imagine, inhabited by gorgeous women and a butler who would bring him anything he desired. Sounds like most people’s idea of paradise, right? The archangel Michael appeared then, and my friend asked him how hell could be so nice; Michael basically said something to the effect that it gets old eventually (at least, that’s what I gathered from my friend’s story).

Hello,

I’m an atheist, so I would say immediately that what your friend dreamed was just that - a dream. Weird things happen in our dreams, and this is because the brain is processing the information it has collected over a period of time.

That said, I am a former Catholic. And from a Catholic perspective, it seems like your friend was being deceived. Just because an entity claims it’s name is “Michael” does not necessarily mean it is really Michael (as in, St. Michael the Archangel). My guess is that he’s being deceived by the Devil. Scripture makes it very clear that Hell is a place of torment and suffering: "There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out (Luke 13:28). It’s important to always stack up these private experiences with the Bible and Church teaching. If it does not align with biblical or Church teaching, it is to be dismissed: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” (Galatians 1:8). What your friend is going through is nothing more than Class A deception, and he’s being deceived this way so that he can take this life rather complacently and not work out his salvation with “fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12) as Paul did.

 

[Dorothy]

Heaven…“eye has not seen nor ear heard …”

Hell…Any way you describe it, God is not there and that is hell!

 

[Mijoy2]

That’s kind of what I think heaven and hell are. Now here’s what I think heaven and hell are NOT. Hell is not a torture chamber. There are no pitchforks or caverns or cauldrons or chains. .

In Fatima the vision the children were shown by Our Blessed Mother was of a fiery pit consuming the lost souls.

Your scenario seems more in line with C.S.Lewis scenario in The Great Divorce.

 

[RyanK]

Hello,

I’m an atheist, so I would say immediately that what your friend dreamed was just that - a dream. Weird things happen in our dreams, and this is because the brain is processing the information it has collected over a period of time.

That said, I am a former Catholic. And from a Catholic perspective, it seems like your friend was being deceived. Just because an entity claims it’s name is “Michael” does not necessarily mean it is really Michael (as in, St. Michael the Archangel). My guess is that he’s being deceived by the Devil. Scripture makes it very clear that Hell is a place of torment and suffering: "There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out (Luke 13:28). It’s important to always stack up these private experiences with the Bible and Church teaching. If it does not align with biblical or Church teaching, it is to be dismissed: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” (Galatians 1:8). What your friend is going through is nothing more than Class A deception, and he’s being deceived this way so that he can take this life rather complacently and not work out his salvation with “fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12) as Paul did.

This is so confusing. First you say you’re an atheist and then you give advice in regards to spirituality. So confusing! lol

 

[odile53]

Well, since nobody who’s actually in either place has picked up a laptop to let us know, it’s all speculation.

But right now I’m doing the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. I’ve just finished up the first week of this, and one of the exercises in the first week (where we meditate and pray about sin,) IS a meditation on hell. Ignatius invites us to use our imaginations on this, only he calls it something called “application of the senses” and “composition of place.” One does these with structured excerpts from Scripture or the teachings of the Church in this format, with a very logical progression.

In “composition of place,” essentially what you do is to construct the scene, and then “apply your senses” (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste) to the scene and note your intellectual and emotional response to it. Ignatius realized that each of us approaches spirituality in slightly different ways, and encouraged this practice throughout the Exercises, along with prayer, spiritual reading (mostly, Scripture, but there are some other references as well from the Imitation of Christ,) and discussion of what we are experiencing with a knowledgeable and trustworthy spiritual director.

So it’s a very valid practice (having been around in this form for about five hundred years,) but it’s critical to be under some form of spiritual direction to avoid wandering into something that is so off the wall that it will cause us grave spiritual harm. Most of us have some experience with meditation and prayer, but delving further into it on one’s own has a strong potential for letting us excuse all sorts of errant nonsense on the erroneous belief that this is what God told us. The scenario your friend described may be of God, but it may be his own wishful thinking, and lead him into a life of sinfulness as such a scene would be tremendously inviting even if “it eventually gets old.” It’s pretty obvious to an experienced spiritual director when someone under direction is going off on a wild tangent.

Your friend might want to run his dream past a priest, deacon, or religious brother and get their take on it if he thinks it is actually an influence on his life. If you look at the stories of the saints, one thing that you will notice is that almost all of them had some form of spiritual direction (usually a priest.) This is one of the key differences between true spirituality and superficial emotionalism. The world of the spirit is a dangerous place to navigate on one’s own, that is why we need solid Church teaching and knowledgeable directors who can help us stay on course in a path that is truly of benefit to our souls.

 

[Bohm_Bawerk]

This is so confusing. First you say you’re an atheist and then you give advice in regards to spirituality. So confusing! lol

From a traditional Catholic’s perspective. But me personally…I think it was just a weird dream. I think the OP’s friend needs to examine the material he was reading/watching, as that is likely to have influenced the content of his dream.

Hope that solves the confusion

 

[Eclogue]

To clarify, I don’t believe hell actually is a beautiful tropical beach. That was just the dream’s way of depicting the attractiveness of sin. No one can deny that sin is attractive to us. Temptation is the mechanism by which we are lured to our destruction. The terms “hell” and “sin” are almost interchangeable; it’s just that the former is permanent while the latter can be rejected at any time during our life. Both have the same substance: separation from God. The point is, if you long for worldly pleasures (symbolized by the beach, butler, and babes), and the surest way to achieve these pleasures is through sin, you are going to tend towards sin.

I am not discounting the possibility that it was just a crazy dream. All I said was that it got me thinking. My friend never mentioned it again and he seems to be trying to better himself spiritually, so I don’t think the dream had a negative effect on him. The only reason we speculated it might be a vision was because he had been having a lot of weird supernatural stuff happenning to him at the time. But maybe the dream was fueled by his anxiety about that sort of thing. Whatever it was, it just got me speculating.

I don’t think the Fatima vision of hell was meant to be taken literally either, although I haven’t done a lot of research on it. I think it may have been Our Lady’s way of showing the spiritual agony of those who choose hell over heaven. After all, being tortured is really bad and all, but what really merits the pity of Our Lady is the way sinners throw their lives away pursuing worthless selfish goals when they could do so much good if they only tried.

 

[fhansen]

I started thinking about this after a friend told me about a strange dream he had (perhaps it was a vision?). He said that in his dream a demon appeared to him and basically took him on a tour of “his personal hell.” My friend was surprised to find that his hell was actually a tropical beach, the most beautiful beach you could imagine, inhabited by gorgeous women and a butler who would bring him anything he desired. Sounds like most people’s idea of paradise, right? The archangel Michael appeared then, and my friend asked him how hell could be so nice; Michael basically said something to the effect that it gets old eventually (at least, that’s what I gathered from my friend’s story).

I don’t really know if this was a vision, per se, but it got me thinking about the true nature of the afterlife. Another influence was Dante’s Inferno; I was intrigued by how everyone’s punishment was really an extreme, twisted version of what they longed for in life. These and other things have brought me to the conclusion that, when we die, God will give us what we want. If we love one another in life, we will be blessed with the presence of God who is Love. And if I love only myself, then God will not force me to join Him in His all-encompassing love for humanity. He will leave me alone and not bother me again. Only then will I see how empty and painful it is to love no one but myself, to be cut off from real Love.

That’s kind of what I think heaven and hell are. Now here’s what I think heaven and hell are NOT. Hell is not a torture chamber. There are no pitchforks or caverns or cauldrons or chains. These things are just metaphors for the self-inflicted spiritual agony of the sinful. If you are “being good” just to avoid physical pain, you need to reevaluate your motivations. If your motivation is the fear of physical discomfort, you’re going to have a hard time staying out of hell. Same with the “pop-culture” concept of heaven. There are no mansions in heaven. There are no gold paving-stones in heaven. There is no eternal ice-cream buffet in heaven. If your motivation is the desire for mansions and gold and comfort and ease, you’re going to have a hard time getting into heaven. You should do what’s right because it’s right, not in order to acquire pleasure or avoid pain. Virtue is its own reward. If you can’t accept that, you’re headed for tropical paradise in a handbasket.

Just some weird speculation. Does anyone else have any ideas about the nature of heaven, hell, and/or purgatory? I just find this stuff interesting, and I think it might help my spiritual journey if had a clearer view of the destination, so to speak.

In Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict said that God is heaven. The nearer we are to God, the nearer we are to the source of goodness and happiness, the farther we are from God, the closer we are to hell-maybe hell would be our own version of happiness but in any case it would have to do with the rejection of love and the unrelinquished exaltation of self.
Aquinas said, “God alone satisfies”.
Purgatory is just a finishing school where we finally, fully, learn to choose rightly, to be totally sold out to God and unattached to anything other than Him first and foremost.

 

[Spock]

I started thinking about this after a friend told me about a strange dream he had (perhaps it was a vision?). He said that in his dream a demon appeared to him and basically took him on a tour of “his personal hell.” My friend was surprised to find that his hell was actually a tropical beach, the most beautiful beach you could imagine, inhabited by gorgeous women and a butler who would bring him anything he desired. Sounds like most people’s idea of paradise, right? The archangel Michael appeared then, and my friend asked him how hell could be so nice; Michael basically said something to the effect that it gets old eventually (at least, that’s what I gathered from my friend’s story).

This sounds suspiciously like the old joke about the Microsoft programmer who passed away. He was given the option to look at heaven and hell before choosing where he wants to go. An angel then showed him a beautiful beach, with pretty girls, lots of booze, volleball, music, etc… He was amazed and said: “wow, heaven is great!”. No, the angel said, this is actually hell. “In that case” said the programmer “I can hardly wait to see heaven!”. He was then taken to a decreipt park, where old geezers were feeding dead pigeons, and was told: “this is heaven”. The programmer said: “well, in that case, I guess, I will choose hell”. “OK”, said the angel, and in a second, the programmer found himself in red-hot lava, up until his neck. He screamed: “hey, what is this? where is the beach, the girls, the music???”. The angel looked back and said: “That was the demo version… this is the production release”.

I think your friend played a joke on you.

 

[Eclogue]

Haha, it’s entirely possible he was playing a joke on me, though I can usually tell when he’s lying. The only reason I brought up the dream was because it started me thinking. It would have done the same if I had read it in a joke book. Maybe it was a dream based on a joke he read; I don’t know. The question of whether or not it was a real dream is irrelevant to the discussion.

fhansen: That’s exactly what I think, thank you for pointing out where Pope Benedict and St. Aquinas said it better.

tonyrey: I do think that heaven and hell begin right now, in many respects. Most importantly, you are either living for God, loving your neighbor, etc. or you are living for sin, separating yourself from God in order to pursue your own selfish ambitions. And since the presence of God is heaven and the absence of God is hell, it makes sense that we can experience either one (to some degree) here on earth.

 

[paulquimz2]

paulqimz2,

Heaven and hell are justice of God, These are state of being united or separate from God, heaven is a state wherein you can see God face to face , the absence of pain, the state of eternity of perfection, while on the other hand ,hell is a state wherein you experience the eternity of imperfection being separated from God’s love and punishment for the unjust thing you have done on earth.God is loving but He is also a just God who gave punishment for those killers,murderers adulterers and evil people who enjoy life for the sake of others.Heaven and hell exist because God is just.