Reincarnation and Karma – Hell and Heaven: Sufferings of hell and pleasures of heaven

Reincarnation and Karma – Hell and Heaven: Sufferings of hell and pleasures of heaven

Source: AvatarMeher.org, AMB Hyderabad Center

Bodily sensations of coarser desires: Thus in the finer desires, the actual sensations play a subordinate role to the derivative aspects based upon the sensations. In the coarser desires the chief element is provided by the actual sensations connected with the physical object and the sensations aroused by them through bodily response to their possession. The organic sensations of the physical body play the greatest part in experiences connected with the coarser desires. Through them the individualized soul feels its own existence as the gross body much more effectively and vividly than through experiences connected with finer desires.

Sufferings of hell and pleasures of heaven: Almost the entire significance of experiences brought about by the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of coarser desires is constituted by the bodily sensations themselves. Therefore they can rarely yield the full experience of fulfillment achieved through finer desires merely by the exercise of thought and imagination. It is characteristic of the coarser desires to insist on the possession and assimilation of the gross objects them selves. Any imaginative idea of the gross objects merely serves the purpose of accentuating the urge to reach out to them. Since the gross objects of the coarser desires are not available in the semi-subtle world, these desires are mostly productive of an intensified experience of the suffering of non-fulfillment. Just as in the gross world the presence of coarser desires leads to the preponderance of suffering over pleasure, in the life after death the revived experiences connected with these coarser desires also lead to a preponderance of suffering over pleasure-thus bringing into existence the hell state. Similarly, in the life after death the revived experiences connected with the finer desires lead to a preponderance of pleasure over suffering, thus bringing into existence the heaven state.

-Discourses 7th Ed., p309

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