The Reality of Heaven and Hell

I believe that hell is a mythological place and the devil an archetypal figure. These myths are continually misinterpreted in a literal sense, so that we come to believe in a permanent, metaphysical hell that lasts forever (or at least for a long time) after death here on earth, rather than simply describing hell as the choice to be alone, but to be right and in control. Hell as myth reflects the words of John Milton in Paradise Lost: Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.

Hell is a state, not a place. It is a here-and-now choice made each moment. Despite what we may have been taught about the irrevocable nature of hell, that which can be chosen can be unchosen. It can be rescinded at any time. That’s what free will is. To put a time limit on free will is to treat it like a football game, where you only have so much time to act before the clock expires and you lose. Why would choice work like that? If free will is truly free, it wouldn’t be constrained by anything, even time. The human belief in the literal nature of hell as an eternal place is a belief selected by those who choose to belief that. But you don’t have to believe it just because they do.

Beliefs serve purposes. They serve us, or at least we believe they do. So, we need to ask: what are these beliefs in a devil and a place of eternal punishment called hell in service of? Functional or dysfunctional, these beliefs have functions. They serve an agenda.

Whose agenda do the beliefs in a devil and in hell serve?

The function of the devil is essentially the role of tempter and a punisher, and the devil’s jurisdiction, hell, is one of punishment. As the purveyor of sin, the devil tempts us to purchase with our immortal souls the pleasures which sinning provides. With a belief in hell and its devil, we think we can purchase pleasure. And so, one function of our belief in hell is that, by paying for it, we can experience pleasure. We believe that punishment is the price of pleasure. The devil and hell function as the currency in which this price is paid.

The part of us that seeks control, victory, and being right – often called the ego – has an interest in keeping us guilty and afraid, so it can maintain control of the limited psychic energy available to it within the closed system of each individual personality. Better to rule than to serve. Better to wrest and keep control over you – the decider – than to choose love. Hell is this decision to live alone, without love, in exchange for control.

To rule over you, the ego needs to reinforce your sense of worthlessness and guilt. When you ‘sin,’ you judge yourself as worthless and guilty. Sooner or later, assuming culpability for all this perceived transgression becomes intolerable. It can no longer be internalized. The guilt and blame begin to corrode their own psychic container, which is you. The part of the personality whose function it is to maintain the integrity of the container must project blame and guilt onto others or risk the destruction of the container. Otherwise, the disintegration of the personality results. We call this projection.

Note the strong relationship between the devil and hell, and judgment and punishment. The devil acts as contemnor, and hell is his place of chastisement. Without judgment and the need to exact a sentence as the result of that judgment, the need for a literal place called hell falls away. Therefore, the real human need which fuels the belief in hell is in retribution. Retribution is impossible without judgment.

When we humans picked up the cudgel of judgment, we immediately thought we needed to punish. Love, on the other hand, is all about forgiveness. The fact that we think we and those about us need to be judged and punished proves we lack the capacity to judge. This brings to mind another famous myth: The Fall of Humanity. Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and vil. Since they were human, they lacked complete information. They therefore lacked the capacity to judge correctly. They saw themselves as naked, as less than innocent. Yet innocence cannot be lost. We only think it can.

The Expulsion from Paradise and Fall of Humanity were devised as metaphor and they reveal a great truth when interpreted mythologically. To the extent they’re used literally, the proponents of these interpretations have their own agendas, their own rationale for fueling these beliefs. These metaphors seek to reveal the dangers of pride and judgment. Yet that very pride appropriates the myth to serve the purposes of control. For who are we say what we deserve? Who are we to believe we even have the capacity to judge ourselves fairly? Who are we to think we can gamble away our souls? Perhaps the soul is not the ego’s to fritter away.

Of course, we’re all entitled to our own beliefs, and these agendas of pleasure, control, righteousness, judgment, guilt, the need for retribution, the need to project guilt onto others to preserve the human personality, and the need for punishment an penance may not always be consciously chosen. In most cases, they are probably not. When they operate below the level of consciousness, they sabotage us without being abetted by conscious choice and intention.

The nature and content of my beliefs in a devil and in hell are defined by the nature and content of my belief in a God. If I don’t believe in either, there’s no debate. Yet even here, the investment in sin, judgment and consequence may persist in other beliefs and laws, whether we consciously see the psychological function of these beliefs or not. There is the belief in karma. There is the belief in entropy. Though on the surface these agnostic beliefs may seem to serve purely logical and scientific functions, note that at their root they invest in the inevitability of consequence and in the disordering nature of reality. Some ancient schemes of metaphysical and philosophical belief are heavily invested in the impurity of matter, the inexorable nature of original sin, and condemnation to potentially endless rounds of birth, death and suffering. Modern thermodynamic laws of chaos hold that all physical systems into which humans are born are subject to the decaying effects of entropy, the heat death of the universe and all of its subsystems.

These scientific, philosophical and metaphysical beliefs, some relatively new and some ancient, may subconsciously incorporate the literal beliefs in the old mythological forms of sin, the devil, death and hell, even though adherents to the more modern of these systems consciously deny the literal existence of the myths. In other words, certain agnostic schools of philosophy, science and metaphysics may still retain the ancient, literal beliefs in sin and its consequences and carry their energy subconsciously. They may serve as subconscious carriers of these ancient beliefs for psychological purposes which involve the price one must pay for—

• pleasure,
• the obsessive need for control both within the individual psyche and also over others,
• the perceived need to exercise the faculty of judgment,
• deep-seated feelings of and investment in guilt,
• the need for retribution once this guilt is detected and the tax for it falls due,
• the need to project this intolerable guilt onto others to preserve the human personality,
• the perceived need for penance, and
• a strongly felt need to be right about all of these things.

Human belief – one way or the other – does not affect the existence or nature of a higher power or a lower power, of a heaven or a hell. If any of these exist, our beliefs around whether they are or aren’t won’t affect the fact of their existence. If reality possesses certain qualities – or if it’s beyond the conditioning of any qualities at all – these qualities or lack thereof won’t be altered by our beliefs about them.

Yet on this plane of existence, beliefs have consequences. They serve as the dynamos which power our destinies, for beliefs determine the direction in which we move, both as individuals and as groups. Beliefs are consequential when we act from them, and when we try to impose them upon others.

We should be careful, therefore, in what we believe. We can examine these beliefs thoroughly, and ask: What is this belief in service of? Is it better to receive unconditioned reality – to accept reality without conditions – than to rule in a hell of our own making? If so, then our election is to choose love over fear, to opt for surrender as opposed to control. By this very belief, we may be choosing nirvana, here and now.

© 2021 by Michael C. Just