BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Amos
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 11:11 PM

They are metaphorical terms describing the condition into which the individual soul can arrive by tending or neglecting its own integrity, clarity, and karma.

The karma is aways running into stray dogma, which makes the whole situation hard to understand.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Charmion
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:50 PM

I really don't believe in an afterlife, although I occasionally make jokes about it. Over the years, I have come to think of Heaven as the state of being aware that one is not only in the presence of the divine principle, but also playing in the same jam session and keeping up nicely. As for Hell, like others with experience of untreated clinical depression, I passed through one of its suburbs once and was lucky enough to find the highway again more by accident than by design.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: frogprince
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:28 PM

Wow. Some years back in my life, I could have given ya a nice simple relatively clear answer. Heaven is "where" (I don't think I would have really pointed up into space since I was very young) God is, and where people attuned to Him spend eternity with Him. Also in my early years, hell for me was a place of literal agony in flames, the destiny of those who didn't measure up to God's standards, and who didn't ask his forgiveness/accept Jesus's sacrifice/for their sins/shortcomings.

If "hell" has any meaning for me now, I guess it is alienation; from others, from "God", from one's best self. I absolutely reject a literal/fundamentalist "hell". Say for a moment that "Osama Bin Laden definitely deserved to go to hell". Then think with me; he is dropped into searing flames. He is there in agony for three hundred sixty five billion years as punishment for the first of the victims of 9/ii. Then three hundred sixty five billion years for the next victim. Except it doesn't really work that way. He is now actually no closer to relief from total agony than he was 770 billion years before. And, to the true-blue fundamentalist, Osama is accompanied there by millions of decent people whose downfall was...failing to accept Jesus.

I've been so conditioned to think of Heaven in terms of eternal peaceful fellowship with God, that is still there in my mind. But I have no real conviction now that I'll ever know any "Heaven" except that my wife survived last summer and is still with me, I have some very dear family and friends, and I've learned something of the best hearts of even a lot of people I may never meet in person, thinking especially just now of Nigel Patterson's thread here.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:23 PM

Whatever you make them. You define your own.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bobert
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:22 PM

Same deal, LH... You got it...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:17 PM

Hey, Bobert...I pretty much got the impression while I was growing up that marriage is hell. As a result, I never did marry, had no intention of doing so, but I have experienced both heaven and hell with girlfriends at various times anyway. It just didn't last as long as my parents' marriage did...(a lifetime).

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:13 PM

It certainly seems like that at times, doesn't it, Bill? ;-)

I was told absolutely nothing about either heaven or hell when I was a child. Nada. Zip. I was told about all the usual stuff (money, furniture, family, relatives, neighbours, mathematics, books, science, machinery, politics, society, guns, history, war, art, food, house rules, etc.).

My parents were atheists. ;-) I never thought about stuff like heaven and hell when I was a child.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bobert
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:09 PM

Simple...

Yer current wife = Heaven

The ex = Hell

Wes Ginny Algebra...

B;~)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:05 PM

I know what I was told when I was a child... and I know many opinions from various religious groups... and there are so many variations that it's hard to start.

I have an illustrated copy of Dante's Inferno (Gustave Doré's engravings) which may have done as much as anything to put images of Hell into Western culture.
I personally believe both are embroidered stories based on human hopes & fears as they try to make sense out of life and imagine what 'comes after'.

In many Asian religions there was no Heaven & Hell as such, but rather the Wheel of Saṃsāra.

I do kind of like Sartré's conclusion in "No Exit" that "Hell is other people"

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 09:58 PM

"Do you know what heaven and hell are? What are they?"

No, I don't know for sure. I've considered various different theories about it, and there are a great many of them, but there's no way I can know for sure unless I directly experience heaven or hell, is there?

"Do you believe in it"

Yes...in a sort of general sense, but that would need considerable explanation.

No...in the sense of any absolutely specific definition of what it's supposed to be like. I have no direct experience of my own to go on, so how could I do anything but speculate about it? Other people's opinions can be interesting, but they're not a basis on which I would form a belief. Belief, after all, indicates certainty.

I have some possible theories about it.

Here's one: Heaven could be the most joyful state of consciousness. Hell could be the most painful, unpleasant or despairing state of consciousness. That's one way of looking at it.

Here's another: Heaven could be a state of feeling complete (fullfilled). Hell could be a state of feeling extremely incomplete and unfulfilled, and having no idea what to do about it.

Here's another: Heaven could be the experience of communion with all that one truly loves. Hell could be feeling totally alone, with no positive connection to anyone or anything.

I've seen a few people who were in a heaven-like state of mind, more than a few who were in a hellish state of mind, and a lot of others who were somewhere between those extremes. Most of us are somewhere between.

Are you asking about an afterlife? I think it's likely, it seems very likely to me, but I have no way of being absolutely certain about it...until I die.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don Firth
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 09:55 PM

Complicated religious concepts with all sorts of wild-eyed mythology connected with them.

But I would say states of mind.

I'll put some serious thought to the matter and be back later. Good question, deserving of serious answers.

Don Firth

Subject: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 09:36 PM

I recently started a thread and asked a simple question about a religion thing. The thread went to hell (joke).

But, within that thread, I asked a second simple question after the discussion went south and I grew tired of the bullshit bickering. NObody really addressed my initial question and they didn't address my second question so I figured I would start a new thread to ask a very simple question...

Do you know what heaven and hell are? What are they?

I would really like to know if anybody actually knows the concept of Heaven & Hell and would care to share their views in a mannerly way. Seems a LOT of people don't.

So... what is it and do you believe in it?