One of the most important tenants of all mainstream religions is the looming prospect of Hell! As you learned in chapter 5, the historical consensus on the structure of the spiritual world contains at least one lower plane which is dark and unpleasant. Whether or not you believe in Satan, fire and brimstone, with little red devils and their pitchforks, Hell would not be a nice place to spend eternity if you had to go there after you died. Foundational religions not only acknowledge this, but rely upon evil and fanciful descriptions of the lower planes to enforce the political laws that have accreted around their core of spirituality.
Let me state at the outset that some modern mediums do not believe in any form of darkness within the spirit realm. They believe that when a person dies, he or she is transformed from a person who lived an evil life into a purified spirit who quickly gains heavenly enlightenment and begins a process of self-purification. They treat the Hellish parts of the spiritual world as non-existent or at most, more of an inconvenience than as a serious domain of heaven. They envision them as places where spirits go voluntarily because they regret their evil lives.
It may be that these mediums have had little or no contact with spirits who occupy these planes, or that to condemn any soul to the “outer darkness”, even for a finite time would infer prolonged punishment for bad behaviors that they excuse or overlook in others for personal reasons. Being judgmental has become a modern sin. Many people today, in an effort to be non-judgmental in a “politically correct” world, find it easier to ban the dark spheres themselves than it is to believe in punishment for those who may, in fact, need serious rehab to make them understand their own evil lives.
The evidence of violent hauntings and demonic possessions has been around long before the advent of any modern religion. And so has the evidence for Hell. In order to believe that the lower spheres do not exist, one would have to ignore the voluminous evidence for evil or ignorant spirits and the reports of the mediums who deal with them. You would have to ignore demonic possessions and the exorcisms that are used to fight them. You would have to ignore the huge number of reports of poltergeist infestations and hauntings by evil spirits. You would also have to ignore the incredible number of evil people who commit unspeakable crimes and die entirely unrepentant. Do you really believe that the mere fact of their deaths would make these evil souls regret having lived evil lives?
It is much easier to find compelling evidence of evil spirits in the paranormal literature than it is to find genuine evidence of God. God, after all, works in subtle ways and acts exclusively through spirits that remain closer to us in our material plane. The dark spheres are as much a part of the spiritual world as prisons are within our own. They serve a very vital function. Evil spirits don’t regret their evil lives until they have had ample time to taste the evil that they themselves have wrought upon others while living on earth. That’s the function of the hells. They are the places where evil souls learn the reality of their own darkness.
The dark planes are not meant to be permanent places of punishment. They are simply dark suburbs of heaven where spirits steeped in negativity deal with others of their kind and can experience their own negativity as if it were reflected back at them by a mirror. They are simply “the lower planes of Heaven”; planes where spirits who would otherwise disrupt the evolution of the better natured souls on the higher planes are confined, and allowed develop at their own pace. They may spend what seems to them like centuries of earth time learning their lessons, but eventually most will learn and graduate to progressively brighter spheres.
The spirit of Francis Banks as channeled by Helen Grieves in her book Testimony of Light gives an extremely believable account of the brightness of her heavenly realm and a single hint of a darker one. She tells the story of a Nazi leader who became one of her spirit patients. (She had been a Catholic nun working as a hospital nurse and administrator before she died. The first rung on her spiritual ladder after the death of her body was in a spiritual hospital working alongside other Catholic nuns and priests, ministering to the spirits of patients who had recently crossed over.)
The man had been a Nazi leader; well-known and extremely powerful during the last war. After the downfall of Germany, he had committed suicide. (I cannot give his name, but it is not Hitler.) Since that time he had been “lodged in the shadows.” Mother Florence explained that he had been “wandering in the lower places.” You would no doubt refer to this dark place as the “lower astral.” In any case, for twenty earth years, he had been imprisoned by his own evil. (Editor’s note: this work was channeled in 1969)
Now he had been rescued. He was conscious of his terrible cruelty and filled with remorse. Mother Florence warned us that he would need very special nursing, care, understanding and help. Also that we might get a shock at his appearance which, I gathered was not a sight such as I had ever witnessed.
Mother also warned us to draw “a web of protection” around ourselves and to hold firmly to the light.
I was apprehensive as we went toward a separate ward at the far end of the home. But not prepared for the sight that met us.
The ward was dark and gloomy, very different from our usual light and sunny rooms. A pall of murky twilight seemed to hover over it. Only slowly did it become apparent to us that “something” lay on the bed. I looked away quickly from the repellent sight. The poor creature’s body appeared to be covered with sores and scars; the eyes were closed.
“He thinks he is blind” Mother Florence whispered. “He is not of course. But the light here is too bright and penetrating for him as yet; and he cries out that it has blinded him.”
The man was a terrible and pathetic sight. As I looked away again I became aware of Father Joseph, who sat at the head of the bed behind the patient.
“In the next ward,” Mother Florence was saying, “is a woman who was one of his victims, a young Jewish mother who has arrived with him. She has been bound to him by her deep hatred. But she is progressing because she had real love in her heart for her husband and child who were snatched from her. She has the power of Love in her soul. He, poor creature has not…yet….”
Greaves, Helen (2009-06-25). Testimony of Light: An Extraordinary Message of Life after Death. Penguin Publishing Group.
Remember that the act of dying does NOT endow any soul with an infinite knowledge of right and wrong. Nor does it expunge the unacknowledged guilt of seriously bad behavior. No one who has led a reasonably good life would be pleased to find himself after his death occupying the same heavenly domain as Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot or any number of serial murderers and sexual predators. Hell is an essential part of the spiritual world, and without it, neither the earth nor heaven can exist in any coherent and orderly fashion. They would both be full to overflowing with the spirits of crooks, murders and predators!