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The Life Beyond Death2226
will undergo the traditional tortures and suffering (all in his imagination of
course) until—he receives a valuable disciplinary lesson, the dim memories
of which will haunt him in the next incarnation. This, of course, is an extreme
case. There are many other degrees and grades of “hells” carried over to
the Astral Plane by souls of various shades of religious belief. Each has the
punishment which is best adapted to exert a deterring influence and effect
over him in his next life.
The same is true of the ideal of “heaven,” The soul finds itself enjoying the
bliss of the blessed, according to its own ideals, for the good deeds and
acts it has to its credit in the infallible books of its memory. Inasmuch as no
soul has been altogether “bad,” nor none absolutely “good,” it follows that
each soul has a taste both of reward and punishment, according to its merits
as determined by its awakened conscience. Or, stating it in another way,
the conscience “strikes an average” for it, which average, likewise, agrees in
detail with the prevailing belief of the soul.
Those who in earth-life have deliberately brought themselves to the
conviction that there is no “hereafter” for the soul, have a peculiar experience.
They meet with their kind on a plane in which they imagine that they have
been transplanted to another planet and are still in the flesh. And there they
are made participants in a great drama of Karma, being made to suffer for
the miseries which they have wrought upon others, and to enjoy blessings
which they have bestowed upon others. They are not punished for the
unbelief—that would be unthinkable injustice—but they learn the lesson
of right and wrong in their own way. This experience, likewise, is purely
mental, and arises merely from the expression in Astral manifestation of the
memories of their earth-life, urged on by the awakened conscience which
gives them “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” with a vengeance.
Belief or disbelief in a future state, does not alter the cosmic law of
compensation and Astral “purgation.” The laws of Karma cannot be defeated
by a refusal to believe in a hereafter, nor a refusal to admit the distinction
between right and wrong. Every human being has, deep down under the