Before I go any further, it is important to emphasize that there is no external judgement of souls. Neither God nor any avenging angel casts any soul into Hell. The spiritual level that a soul reaches is dependent on its own spiritual buoyancy, which is discussed more thoroughly in chapter 8. It is part of the spiritual law of compensation and is akin to an earthly law of physics. Souls seek their own spiritual levels in the same way that water seeks its own physical level.
The hells are reserved for the souls of people who were exceptionally evil when they were alive. Even people who waste their lives in and out of jail for committing petty crimes will probably not find themselves in “the swamps” after passing. These people, as well as the souls who led poorly constructed lives or spent their lives gaining their money and enjoyment at other people’s expense will find themselves in one of the Winterlands.
The lowest Winterlands are dark places where those souls who have learned little while living on the earth gravitate after their death. The depth to which they descend depends upon the degree of evil that ruled their lives. However, as long as they remain within the Winterlands, they are still in a gray area not totally devoid of spiritual light. These are not the hells where there is little or no light and where redemption may take what feels to the inmate like eons. With some work and growing self-awareness they will begin to ascend into lighter areas until they graduate into the Summerlands.
Some of the more recently deceased Winterland spirits make contact with loved ones through mediums. Most of those who have begun to understand the real purposes of their existences voice their regret for the lives they lived and acknowledge the evil acts they have committed. The admission of their evil actions and their willingness to atone are the first steps they make toward redemption.
Good examples of those in the Winterlands might be drug and alcohol addicts who were essentially good people. These addictions may remain as persistent memories attached to the addict’s soul after death becoming major impediments to spiritual evolution. While addictions alone will not drag a soul into the darker hells, they may seriously impede the soul’s transition from the transitional plane into the mainstream sequence. The addicted spirit then leads a frustrating existence fixated on a substance it can never obtain. Overcoming this constant unfulfilled desire becomes the key to its redemption. Ultimately, the soul must finally realize that its suffering is entirely psychological and it can end it simply by “thinking” itself well. This may sound simple, but it isn’t. When it finally happens, the soul becomes free to transition into the mainstream sequence, or if it is already in a mainstream winterland, to begin the process of rising into the Summerlands where it might have landed immediately had it not become an addict during its life.
We do not generally communicate with the spirits in the depths of the deepest winterlands or the levels below because of their extremely low spiritual frequencies. Spirits that descend below the winterlands into the hells were people intentionally involved in very serious evil during their lives. We are NOT talking about people who simply “wasted” their lives, were sexually promiscuous, held harmful political beliefs or violated some religious or political taboo. The people whose souls descend into the hells are the people who made their livings hurting other people, or who actually caused pain, injury or death for political or financial purposes or for their own entertainment.