Religions have traditionally spoken of “heaven” and “hell”, the one a p

Religions have traditionally spoken of “heaven” and “hell”, the one a place of joy and reward, the other a place of unceasing torment and punishment.

The original intent seems to have been to motivate people to behave properly, or non-sinfully. Now behavior is paramount. With misbehavior, or sin as it is called, comes delusion and degeneration toward the lower animal level, whereon one is animated by group-soul, rather than enjoying the discretions of a free divine individual being.

The principle is sound if used intelligently. Humans do not have but the two motivations, which can be called desire and fear, or reward and punishment.

To understand, it is necessary to realize that right behavior, non-sinful behavior, is the goal. That must be our focus. To be blindly guided by reward or fear is base and inferior. On the other hand, not to use reward and punishment is unintelligent, since both address the infra and ultra dimensions of the mind, which often control behavior. The proper mindset is to allow reward and punishment to motivate us toward a goal which we embrace.

But being motivated by heaven and hell has become a clumsy, dysfunctional psychology. They are both conceptually unreal, and neither is an effective, immediate motivator toward the goal. (For a better way to look at it, click here.)

Now when we are good, something rewards us, and when we are bad, something punishes us. Maybe it is the cosmos, or perhaps you would prefer to think that it is God. This is not as obvious to the hellbound, who are being tested, but it is happening to them nonetheless. Children experience it indirectly, through their parents.

These rewards and punishments are for our own well-being, intended to bring us into conditions which are way more fun than lesser moral levels. It is important to realize that we can also take an intelligent hand in the process, applying rewards and punishments to our own behavior to bring ourselves into conformity with the way that we want to be.

Our state of rewardedness/punishedness is transcarnate, since the soul is transcarnate, and more really the identity than the personality. Think of it as a behavioral complex, involved in learning the art of behaving in such a way as to become the sort of being that one desires at the time.

The prospect of splurging all our reward credit in one great amrita binge should properly be alarming. What kind of character would that result in? It is our character which causes us to keep our behavior in the desired condition.

A much better concept of after-life is the feedback approach, in which both rewards and punishments are administered for all of our behaviors during the earth-life, intelligently, such as to encourage or discourage our tendencies the amount that reward and punishment should, at the transcarnate level.

The concept of hell as some sort of divine retribution, or the administration of justice, is dangerously wrong. It fosters the notion that sin can be paid for by acceptance of punishment, whereas sin is only error, and punishment is properly merely heuristic, a loving and helpful guide to improvement.

Everyone is handled, after death, in the best way for that given person, for his longest-term well-being. No religion can alter that; you cannot improve upon what is best.

There is another dynamic; a disquieting one. Religion tends to degenerate into a pattern of people being kept semi-hellbound and harvested for their soul-stuff and higher-mind-stuff by the clergy, who dole the people out grace when they come to church to remove the incentive for leaving the hell state.

This is a racket. Part of the dynamic is to get people to affirm that they want to “go to heaven”, a place that very few people on Earth are ready for yet.

Reality is that souls reincarnate. Christ mentioned it, but the christian churches do not teach it, and encourage people to assume that this life is it. To affirm that you want to go to a place of ultra-reward after this particular life is dangerous. Some hell and suffering is likely to befall you during this life in order to balance that, so that it will not rot your character.

Don’t worry -- there are heavenly states between lives; one has only to look at the condition babies are in when they get here, to realize that.

Personally, I do not seem to have much of a vote about whether and when I receive a particular reward; that seems to be decided from above. But I keep a list of the things I want, not only so that I might receive them, but so I can be more easily guided (coerced) into the behaviors desired by my higher self, and ultimately my Buddha-self.