On this subject, William Judge wrote the following:
« Heaven and Hell are also common to Christianity, Buddhism, and Brahmanism.
The Brahman calls it Svarga; the Buddhist, Devachan; and we, Heaven. Its
opposite is Naraka and Avichi. But names apart, the descriptions are the same.
Indeed, the hells of the Buddhists are very terrible, long in duration and
awful in effect.
The difference is that the heaven
and hell of the Christian are eternal, while the others are not. The others
come to an end when the forces which cause them are exhausted. In teaching of
more than one heaven there is the same likeness, for St. Paul spoke of more
than a single heaven to one of which he was rapt away, and the Buddhist tells
of many, each being a grade above or below some other.
Brahman and Buddhist agree in saying
that when heaven or hell is ended for the soul, it descends again to rebirth.
And that was taught by the Jews. They held that the soul was originally pure,
but sinned and had to wander through rebirth until purified and fit to return
to its source. »
(Echoes of the
Orient I, p.439)
« The Christians have been teaching about heaven and hell; about a
sort of heaven which is very material, I admit, with pearly gates and golden
streets and angels with robes such as no one ever saw and crowns upon their
heads; and hell full of fire and brimstone, with devils throwing people around
with forks into the fire.
The Buddhists have been teaching
the same thing for ages. I can read to you out of their books about a copper
vessel full of boiling oil into which they say fate puts a man. In this he goes
down and down for thousands and thousands of years until he gets to the bottom;
then he begins to rise again to the top, rising for ages again, and when he
gets to the top and thinks he is going to be let out, he begins to sink again,
and that goes on for ages more. Is not that as bad and as material as the
Christian hell?
And then the Eastern teaching of
heaven, of an inimitable and incomprehensible place, yet just as material but
better than the Christian heaven. »
(Echoes of the
Orient II, p.154)
« The state of spiritual but comparative rest known as Devachan is
not an eternal one, and so is not the same as the eternal heaven of Christianity.
Nor does “hell” correspond to the state known to Theosophical writers as Avichi.
All such painful states are
transitory and purificatory states. When those are passed the individual goes
into Devachan.
“Hell” and Avichi are thus not
the same. Avichi is the same as the “second death,” as it is in fact
annihilation that only comes to the “black Magician” or spiritually wicked, as
will be seen further on. »
(Echoes of the
Orient III, p.63)
The former is, as its name
indicates, a place — the astral plane penetrating and surrounding the earth —
the latter a state of being, or rather of consciousness. In Kama-Loka all the
hidden passions and desires are let loose, and enough mentality is retained to make
them tortures. When the astral body in which they cohere is disintegrated, as
it is in time, they remain a sort of entity in the kama-rupa, a form of still
less materiality than the Linga-Sarira.
Eventually this too is said to
fade out, leaving only their essence, the Skandhas, fateful germs of karmic
consequence, which, when the Ego emerges from the devachanic state, are by the
law of attraction drawn to the new being in which it incarnates.
Owing to the law of cohesion
between the principles, which prevents their separation before a given time,
the untimely dead must pass in Kama-Loka a period almost equal to the length
life would have been but for the sudden termination.
Losing the body has not killed
them. They still consciously exist in the astral body, and in the case of very
wicked and forceful persons — some executed criminals, for instance — may be
even more harmful on the astral plane than they were in life. Prolonged
kama-lokic existence is no injustice to the victims of accident, since death,
like everything else, is a karmic consequence.
Finally, it may be said of Kama-Loka
that it is the last conscious state of the thoroughly evil human souls bereft
of the spiritual tie and doomed to annihilation (Avichi). Having in life centered
the consciousness in the kamic principle, preserved intellect and rejected the
spirit, leading persistent lives of evil for its own sake, they are the only
damned beings we know.
Pure souls speedily pass from Kama-Loka
to the devachanic state. It is a period of rest, a real existence, no more
illusionary than earth life, where the essence of the thoughts of life that
were as high as character permitted expands and is garnered by the soul and
mind. When the force of these thoughts is fully exhausted the soul is once more
drawn back to earth, to that environment which will best promote its further
evolution. »
(Echoes of the
Orient III, p.236-7)
OBSERVATION
Here, I only put the William Judge's summary explanations on this subject, but you can also read his detailed explanations in
this other article.
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