HEAVEN, PURGATORY AND HELL EXPLAINED BY WILLIAM JUDGE

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)

« With reference to post-mortem conditions, Theosophy teaches two states of existence somewhat analogous to the Christian “purgatory” and “heaven.” The first, immediately subsequent to earth-life, is Kama-Loka, where the immortal triad takes leave of the lower principles remaining after separation from the body. Thence the Ego passes into Devachan.

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.

(Link)