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A Visit to Hell I will tell you a secret. Sometimes my heart and breath stopped and for a few minutes I was dead... and I went to hell. Most people think they are good, forgetting or not knowing the bad that they do. If they believe in hell, they think someone goes there as punishment, and stays there forever. Love of Prophets, Masters, and saints blessings be upon them, and study of Holy Books prepare each of us for paradise places. Each time I died, I found different places in hell. There is one place where you see everything bad you ever did with your body. Things you don't remember, actions you didn't know were bad, and while being shown this the body suffers the pain you caused by hitting people or slamming doors or punching walls or moving upon this earth which God created, moving like a bulldozer tearing down instead living like a human being respecting God and His creation. Everybody in that place suffers terribly, they cry all the time. I went there when I was twelve years old, it's a terrible place. Hate, anger creates that place and nobody gets out while they are hating but there is so much pain in that place, it is so terrible, it is the hardest place of all to stop hating. When I was there, I cried, "But it isn't fair! I am only a little kid, I didn't know I did those things or what was wrong or right! I didn't know about this place, or that it would make me come here!" and I was told, "That is what they all say. Everybody here says the same thing," and then I heard thousands of people crying, saying those same words. Some of those people were very old, crying, "I was only a child, I did not know!" But there is a worse place than that. There is a place where you hear everything bad you said with your tongue, words you forgot to people you hardly remember, words you didn't even know caused hurt or words that were only thoughtless, careless, which brought harm. Words that are backbiting words. Every word ever screamed or whispered in secret, every cruel remark or false judgement or terrible insult that you made against anyone is screamed at you in this place and the body feels on fire, burning without ever being destroyed. You see that what you accused others of was true of yourself and feel the pain your words caused those you threw those words upon. I went there when I was 18, during a case of pneumonia. It is a place where there is only fire, words, shame, pain. You can only escape by being silent, but in this place there is so much screaming, so much pain you cannot even tell your own cries from anyone else's or hear your own silence when it comes. But there is a worse place than this. There is a place where all the bad thoughts rising in the mind, all the times of doubting God, getting angry or disgusted with His creation, feeling sorry for yourself or superior to somebody else, all the sins made by mind, in thought, are shown to you and these thoughts are like ugly bad things that bite you and push you and there is knowing you have no body. You see your mind as infinite and filled with infinite suffering, tormenting itself. It is very hard to get out of that place, mind cannot escape from that place. Mind cannot remember much, it can hardly even remember one prayer or pleaseant experience as it attacks itself. There is no memory, every bad thought from the past happens again as an event, again and again. If one prayer rises in mind spontaneously, one thought, one name or attribute of God arises in mind, then everyone quiets, pain disappears, then one can leave but everything about this place causes screaming so this silence is hard to find. Some people die, go to that place, escape and return to the body when the doctors push machines down throat, pump heart, make it beat again. Then the person says, "Oh, if I learn one prayer so well, even in hell it would not be forgotten and if I want only God then I will be saved!" but later they think, "I sure thought crazy things while I was unconscious!" and often forget. But there is a worse place. If you went to hell when your breath stopped, heart stopped and then God made it begin again, you return to life knowing you are not the body you walk upon the earth in, not the tongue and the sounds you make as you sing or slander, not the mind as it tortures or amuses itself with images. You have learned life is not forever, death is not final, nothing can be known for certain whereever you are, whatever you are, millions of other people on earth or in hell are no better or worse than yourself and yet you are alone. Consciousness has learned it can leave one place and go anywhere, to the other side of the world or even to hell, even to paradise places. Veils have been cut by dying, chords have been cut by returning to life and so many things that seemed good or important before this happened seem not to matter at all now.