What reasons tend to lead to rebirth in hells?

Tad wrote:

From reading the suttas, it seems that it is very easy for beings to be reborn in hell. Were you able to get any insight what reasons tend to lead to rebirth in hells?

Alexander wrote:

Hi Tad,

From what I have seen, the rule of the nonphysical (if not, also, often the physical...) is that "like attracts like." If you are wise, noble, and just, you will be attracted to locations where those of a similar temperament congregate. If you are violent, fraudulent, and ignoble, you will be attracted to those similar locations. Ah, and for the ignoble, what a great reward to be with those who are like you...!

You can even see a similar operation of this principle here. Notice how you have been attracted to this particular forum with this group of people. As Jeff would say, there are very few mystics in the world, as most are not interested in this path; also, that those mystics have a particular/unique type of "IQ." Notice how utterly ignored and unnoticed this discussion group is. And yet, we find a group of people who are very serious about the spiritual quest here, at least in the English-speaking world.

For general practice, I would say the 10 Commandments, or any of the general ethical prescriptions - "do unto others" - or the Buddhist suttas' / Yogic sutras' prescriptions against killing, theft, fraud, adultery, and so on are the best means to a positive rebirth.

According to Buddhism, the attainment of stream-entry is the ideal... to do that, the scriptures prescribe: (1) the overcoming of doubt that there is a noble path to salvation; (2) the vision that all the external rites and rituals (I think of the Hasids here, for instance...) do not bring merit (this reorients you toward being much more efficient in your spiritual work than the so-called "devout" are); and (3) identity view, overcoming the gross identification with the body, form, matter, and so forth.

Jeffrey wrote:

Alexander summed it up excellently.  If you live your life like a demon, then you will keep company with demons in the after life.  If you live the life of a mystic, then you will rise to very high and blissful domains in the after life.  And, all shades of grey in between.

Is an “enlightened” being immune to the effects of cognitive decline?

Jeffrey wrote:

…I just looked up the life of Leonardo Da Vinci and found none of what I said about him is true, so I am not sure where I got the information, but it might be a blend of art histories.  My memory is so bad these days I really should not say much anymore.

Alexander wrote:

I was pondering this a few years ago; whether an "enlightened" being would still be susceptible to the aging brain. I remember there were some theories going around that said cognitive practice could stave off the effects of decline. I hypothesized at one point that an "enlightened" being might by default be doing those things enough to retain function. But, it looks like it is just random chance.

The past year I have also been witnessing the cognitive decline of my grandmother (90 now), and it is a sad end to a noble life. It does fascinate me how she can remember the times of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but forgets everything else.

It is unfortunate that the body, and the physical brain, wield so much power over us while we are here. I assume cognitive clarity is restored when OOB... but the premise of dying in a kind of body-prison is deeply concerning.

Socrates referred to his own decline in the Crito... That he knew if he escaped the poisoning he would lose his cognitive powers. Which, of course, would have made a quite sad end to his tale.

Perhaps the same concern inspired the Buddha (who was in his 80s I believe) when he ate the poisoned food, or St. Francis when he let himself die of exposure (though he was suffering, I believe, from physical, not mental, infirmities).

After my own run-in with the toxic chemical last year, and its effects on my brain, it became clear just how precarious everything is. Indeed, we are all slaves who can only submit to the Divine Will. A hit on the head can have permanent effects... All the more reason to value the spiritual, and the path to liberation.

Jeffrey wrote:

Yes, there is a group of hypotheses that the enlightened would have impeccable health, or superior cognitive function as they age, but you brought up the evidence to the contrary in the group of mystics you mentioned.  The people of the Abrahamic religions have the story of Methuselah, and other ancient patriarchs of the Abrahamic religions, who lived for long periods of time, centuries. Early in my contemplative life I had subscribed to this hypothesis, but as time went by I found few people who were following extreme health measures were contemplatives or had superior cognitive functions.

The final blow for me was when I looked up a Chinese herbalist who had supposedly lived for 250 years, Li Ching-Yuen. So, I looked him up in Wiki and found out that in the decade before his death he claimed he was 170.  But, new reporters were doing some research on him in the 1920s and found he had been given an award by an Emperor a century earlier that made him something like 250 years old by the 20s.  Then following his story a photograph is taken of him in the 20s as well as 2 articles were written about him.  The reports stated he looked like he was in his 70s.  Shortly after the photographs and articles another reported came looking for him and his wife stated he had gone off into the mountains to die, so the trail ends there, and WWII and the Chinese revolution came along shortly there after, which erased the trail.

To understand this story more, it turns out that the man was an herbalist, and his family was engaged in selling herbs with a reputation life extension, most notably ginseng, and dong quai. So, we can see that the family was motivated to produce a fantastic claim to promote their herb business, and we can explain the deception by the oldest son would take over the deception upon the death of the father, and that deception kept up for generations until 250 years goes by.

So, if we apply this deception to the biblical patriarchs who supposedly lived for centuries, then we can see how this deception could have been applied in those cases. However, the deception only works when there are no photographs, no close scrutiny, and no DNA tests.

So, back to the bigger picture, we are spirit encased in a "cage of flesh" which we can learn to leave in OOBEs from leading a rigorous, self-aware contemplative life. However, we keep coming back to the cage of flesh until it dies, when we are finally released from it at its death.

So to bring this discussion full circle back to how religions decline we see that decline in how much they emphasize fantastic stories of miracles. What better fantastic story than to have a patriarch who lives for centuries, but remains youthful?

Alexander wrote:

Yes, I remember. And just like you were interested in these tales on longevity, I was also open for a long time to the miraculous. "They are such a core part of Christianity and the Gospels," I thought. "How could they be entirely false?" I paid special attention to that Greek word "dynamikos": for instance, the Gospel quote "He (Christ) felt the power (dynamikos) go out of him" when the woman touched his cloak. When the woman did this, she also experienced healing. In that one line, it seemed to be exploring the mechanics behind miracle-working.

Gurdjieff was interested in miracles as well... He had a few interesting takes on it. His idea of the "large accumulator" makes me think of the extreme things humans are capable of when under the effects of adrenaline. But, I can think of no example of it outside of that.

There are, of course, the contemplative phenomena which are real... but the feats of Jesus, such as walking on water in the physical body, or cursing a tree to make it wither, we know are creative fiction. Purposeful - to show the power of a true spiritual teacher to an ancient audience - but today an unneeded source of confusion for modern readers.

Jeffrey wrote:

On miracles:

I noticed some decades ago that the less miracles appeared in a book of philosophy the more wisdom was present; and consequently I was very pleasantly surprised to see there are very few miracles in the Pali Canon, but it is rich in wisdom.  The same goes with the dialogs of Plato, here Socrates demonstrates great wisdom, but no miracles. Rumi, Kabir, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross reveal the charisms, but no miracles.

In my own life back 47 years ago when I tapped into major charisms I took up healing work, and I had considerable success at it, and my patients came back for more because they observed improvements in their health from my work on them.  However, there was no radical healing.  I did not raise the dead, nor did I walk on water, but I flew out-of-body daily, and felt the charisms (virtue/dynamikos) present in me all of the time.  So, I concluded that, while there is some healing possible in the transference of energy/charisms/virtue/dynamikos; nonetheless the laws of physics cannot be violated on the material plane, thus miracle stories are only how religions market themselves to the naive, and a means of reducing the competition with mystics, and therefore the pursuit of miracles is a fool errand.

Discouragement in the Contemplative Life

Alexander wrote:

…I am glad you are having results, Marcus. What you write encourages me to resume my practice. I was doing long sits as well recently, but to no avail. I confess I get quite discouraged. I often read the posts on here about people's ecstasies and I think to myself, "why do these experiences not happen to me?" Then I sit there for hours motionless, in the same state of consciousness as the waking state, and end up feeling like a fool. "Nothing is happening," I think, "there is no bliss or joy or energy..." I think I have to rededicate myself - expect nothing to happen - but just do it straight through for a full 30 days.

Jeffrey wrote:

We often have people arrive here who seem to have trouble experiencing the fruit of the contemplative life, so your inquiry here, Alexander, is very relevant, but we will avoid hijacking someone's discussion to discuss our collective methodology.

1) First premise, a fruitful contemplative life is a lifestyle, not a technique.

2) The Noble Eightfold Path is a reasonably good (working) description of a fruitful contemplative life.

3) The fruit of a fruitful contemplative life is described by the 8th fold of the Noble Eightfold Path.

4) The Noble Eightfold Path has been described here and elsewhere ad infinitum, so we are not going to belabor it here.

5) However, there are subtle details which will be discussed here.

1) A fruitful contemplative life necessitates discipline.

2) The discipline required of a fruitful contemplative life will often place us in conflict between commonly held beliefs and lifestyle choices, and the lifestyle choices that lead to a fruitful contemplative life.  This explains why most mystics did not accumulate name, fame, power or wealth.

3) When we make the lifestyle choices that lead to a fruitful contemplative life we find a calm and peaceful mental state, which we find to be more precious than name, fame, power or wealth.

4)  The level of discipline that leads to a fruitful contemplative life is moment-to-moment, and every moment dedication.

5) Yes, a dedicated and disciplined contemplative starts and ends every day with a meditation session that leads to depth; as well as being mindfully self-aware in every moment, so that every thought, word and deed is informed, and disciplined, and dedicated to leading a fruitful contemplative life.

6) A successful meditation session leads to a deeply relaxed body, and a still mind.

7) A still mind is the doorway to the charisms.  Therefore, stilling the mind should be a contemplative's prime objective.

Jeffrey also wrote:

Contemplatives within the three Abrahamic religions will all be inspired by Psalm 46:10.

Be still, and know that I am God.

As contemplatives within the three Abrahamic religions, we will practice meditation to still our mind to "know" God directly through direct communion, and the fruit of the contemplative life is a measure of that direct communion with God.

Alexander wrote:

Thank you, Jeff; as I have said I have been following your tenets for 13 years and unfortunately I do not experience any profound phenomena beyond the ringing in the ears, heat in the chest, vibrations in the hands, and intuition (revealed knowledge).

I am not sure why this is. Yesterday I made five meditation attempts. One resulted in my falling asleep for 40 minutes. The other were dry, fruitless, barren - frankly, a waste of time. I have experimented with every method: relaxing deeply, stilling the mind, doing nothing, remaining stock-still, waking up in the middle of the night, trying to catch myself in the first moments of awakening, energy work, practicing 24/7 mindfulness and self-inquiry... but they have all borne no fruit.

I have begun to think there is a kind of predetermination in it. As I am certainly one of the world's specialists on knowledge of these topics, and certainly am not lacking in discipline or motivation. I recalled your story of how you had OOBEs from a young age, and in OOB writings there are people who practice for years to no avail, so I assume I am one of the unlucky ones. The supernatural phenomena do not come easily to me.

Perhaps it is the gods that will this on me; or it will come at its proper time. I do admit I get quite discouraged and stop practicing. Then, finally, my nature will win over again and I get back to trying; then, finding no results, I will get frustrated again, and repeat.

I do have to disagree on the afterlife fate of non-contemplatives however. As after all this I would consider myself a "nonreturner." At the same time, it feels my fate is complete liberation in this human life, so the spiritual standstill remains deeply frustrating.

Jeffrey wrote:

1. But these charisms that you are experiencing are profound when you consider that most people do not experience any of these. And, I found that it is important to value the experience of the charisms, and not feel as if you lack attainment, just because your charisms are not at the level of the major mystics. I found by so doing we enhance the experience.

Additionally, I find when I use the charisms as my meditation object when they arise, then the charisms are enriched.  What I mean by using the charisms as your meditation object is to stop whatever cognitive mental exercise you might be engaging in as a meditation technique, such as following the breath, and use that arising charisms as your mental focus.

2. Part of finding fruitful meditation experiences is just to show up regularly.  I mean by that is to sit in meditation at regular intervals, such as first thing in the morning, middle of the day, after work, and last thing at night.  And, use a clock that does not make noise, such as ticking, and have it placed so that if you find you think you are done with meditation, then pop your eyes open and without moving your head you can see the clock face, and if an hour has not gone by, then close your eyes, and sit until that hour is over.

Also, I found that an hour might go by and I get nothing more than the basic sensations as you listed plus a still mind, then maybe I will sit a little longer, and it was that extra time I gave it turned into a massive kundalini rise, that went on for 2 to 3 more hours.

3. I will agree that in my recollection of previous lifetimes I was a mystic in most of my previous lifetimes going back 10s of thousands of years. So, I think most mystics were returning masters who spent their entire lifetime dedicated to deep meditation and mysticism.

But, it is not "god's will" that you have less attainment than you wish for, but part of it is where you are coming from previous lifetimes of contemplative effort.  But, more importantly, from your above description you are having significant successful deep meditations beyond most contemplatives, who never get any of what you described.

4. But, there is great joy in following a master back to the planet to sow the seeds of a genuine path to enlightenment.  This is how I explain how enlightened masters, such as Siddhartha Gautama and Yeshua ben David come to successfully reawaken the path to enlightenment and have such impressive disciples who carry on their work for generations until a pretentious and hypocritical priesthood arises once again to corrupt that path of enlightenment.

What did you think of the article on “Angelology”?

Jeffrey (Jhanananda) wrote:

…Alexander, you pose an interesting topic, with a lot of density to discuss. So, let us start with the pictorial representations of angels, which in the west tend to be people with wings.  The wings of course represent the ability to fly.

As you know we have discussed out-of-body experiences here at length. I argue that the wings on people in pictorial representations of angels is a direct reference to the OOBE.

In reality when a contemplative develops the ability to fly out-of-body is when they move past the 4 jhana and into the 4 ayatanas, which are all out-of-body experiences of higher domains, where we encounter divine beings. So, I would argue that there are 4 heavens, not 7 or 9, but in my experience of the non-physical these domains are infinite, but there are definite classes in those infinite layers.

And, one might see anthropomorphs with wings in the lower dimensions; however, the higher one goes the less the domain parallels the physical until all one encounters as beings is points of light and love, which becomes a network of points of light until one becomes that network of light and love in the highest level.

Just an interesting factoid regarding Islam and Mohamed, its founder. It just so happens that there is a term in Islam that translates as the "8 gates of Islam."  The term 'gate' is a translation of the Arabic term 'jhina' which is where we get the term 'genie'.

And, as you may know the genie in the Aladdin’s lamp story is a spirit being who come out of a magic lamp and grants wishes to Aladdin. So, the genie is a non-physical magical being with powers.  However, if you dig into Islam you will find that there is quite some fear in the general Islamic community regarding genies, because they believe that genies can also be malevolent, so they believe genies are not all benevolent.

Also, linguistically there are a number of definite connections between the Islamic term 'jhina' and the Pali term 'jhana.' 1) Phonologically there is a strong parallel between the 2 terms.  2) Both terms are used for spiritual phenomena and domains. 3) At about the time Mohamed was alive there was a resurgence of the term 'jhana' in Sri Lanka with the arising of an arahant there.  He and his closest disciples were burned along with their temple by the priesthood of Buddhism, who rose up against them in rage for reviving the term 'jhana.' After that the Vissudhimaga was published to subvert the arahant's use of the term 'jhana.' So, it is my opinion that somehow the term 'jhana' made it to the Arabian peninsula and influenced Mohamed.

Also, while on the topic of angels and divine beings and linguistics and how they are represented culturally, the Pali term 'kasina' is used in southeast Asia in the same way the the term 'jhina' is used in Islam, with the same collective fear of invoking a spirit being who may or may not be malevolent. However, in southeast Asia spirit beings (kasinas) are represented as spheres of light, not anthropomorphs, so I think their representation is closer to reality.

Otherwise I find most of what passes for Angelology is fictional, so I did not pay much attention to it. The fiction is summed up in the argument of "how many angels can fit on the head of a pin." The immaterial domains are dimensionless, so the question is completely irrelevant.

The bleakness of repeating life lessons until you “get it right”

Anima wrote:

I guess I just don’t see the point of everything. We are apparently here to learn about the important things like love and forgiveness. According to some we even pre-plan the challenges we will face in each lifetime. The majority consensus seems to be that suicide is not a “real” solution, because you will always come back to learn the same lessons that you escaped by killing yourself. If a person chooses to end his or her life, they are punished with more reincarnations of the same challenges - sometimes with added karma - so in theory you will be born again into another life that is even more miserable, which will also drive you to suicide, unless you tough it out - and just live until your body breaks down.

How could anybody learn their “life lessons” under these conditions? If the very thing that drives you to suicide is the lesson that you can’t learn, are you just doomed to live miserable life after miserable life until you finally “get it” by accident in one of these reincarnations?

Alexander (Shivaswara) wrote:

I’ve been pondering this one myself. I mean the physical realm is certainly “extremely difficult,” “dangerous,” and carries a “high risk of injury.” Think even just of all the stress of the past year 2020-21.

Do we gain wisdom through adversity? Hm I definitely can say that all my difficulties thus far have made me wiser and greater. Could I have achieved these ends without the challenges? Hm, so I guess that is a part of it.

However, then we have the question of - why return over and over? Once we obtain wisdom or completion, why not remain in the nonphysical after this life?

Perhaps that is the conclusion of spiritual masters; John of the Cross, Socrates, the Buddha... they are done and don’t come back again. Except perhaps sometimes to help others. It could be in comparison to them we are like fools, going in circles, not learning anything.

I think on one level it may be a path as they say of “self-realization.” As what are we...?

Before this physical universe existed, “before” the nonphysical cosmos, we were all One, united in complete incomprehensible singularity.

Then, We willed that all this be. That existence exist. And out emanated everything. Countless universes, worlds, beings. The One being split into an apparently infinite number of distinct individuals.

Perhaps wisdom is realizing this. That we are all one, come from this source, and back to it we return... We emanate out, experience the cosmos, experiment, suffer, learn, and play, then return to the source again.

That source is infinite and timeless... one exists there and one transcends existing. It is the incomprehensible divinity that spawns everything...

Jeffrey (Jhanananda) wrote:

Thanks, Alexander, for starting an interesting dialog.  Being terminally ill I have had to become obsessed with solving the question of why has my life taken a steep decline in the last 10 years.  The naive explanation would be that the infinite creator god is punishing me for being sinful. However, if that was the case then why do I have many of the sweet charisms of direct communion with the sacred? And, why when I commune so intimately with the sacred that the sacred doesn't tell me of my "sins" to correct?

My explanation on the big picture is my health problems are not a punishment from an infinite creator god.  They are due to material existence on a planet going through a protracted industrial revolution which is resulting in global levels of air pollution that is killing us all slowly, and has nothing to do with divine will.

This means the suffering of other might be due to unwise choices driven by craving and covetousness (tanha), or it might just be due to physical existence is filled with various kinds of suffering (dukha). Remember the 4 noble truths is all about this realization that physical life is full of suffering, and our suffering is exacerbated by our craving and covetousness (tanha).

But, remember the 4 noble truths ends with a solution to our craving, which is following the Noble Eightfold Path. However, we must realize as long as we are in physical existence suffering (dukha) will continue to be experience, because suffering (dukha) is a property of the physical existence.

And, since suicide was brought up, until we have been fully enlightened by following the Noble Eightfold Path to completely traverse all 8 stages of samadhi to full liberation (nirvana), and mastering them, then our craving and covetousness (tanha) will continue to propel us back to physical existence, where we will experience suffering (dukha).